This project sets out to demonstrate that media coverage can degrade a country's image by using selective news without context. It uses the Netherlands as an example. It is a reaction to the frequent misrepresentations of Israel in many ways in major media, including those of the Netherlands.

Friday, October 31, 2014

The acting
ombudsman, Frank van Dooren, has said that the approach of the previous Deputy
Minister of Finance, Frans Weekers, in dealing with the so-called “Bulgarian
fraud” a year ago, contained huge mistakes.Weekers had decided, in 2013, that people who get support from the
government can only use one bank account.Two weeks after he decided that, the payments to 177,000 people were
suspended.It led to many financial
problems for the intended recipients.Van
Dooren claimed that the short time Weekers gave his officials to deal with the
matter has caused many problems. He added “ Good people suffered from the
misbehavior of bad people.”

Thursday, October 30, 2014

The
prosecution has asked the court to sentence Rapper Hozny to 80 hours of
community service and two months of probation. Earlier this year, Hozny put up
a video on YouTube where two guns are held to the head of a Wilders lookalike, and then the picture fades to black and a shot is heard.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Richard
Bistrong, an American weapons trader, has explained how the corruption in the
weapon trade functions. Until his arrest
in 2007, he was a supplier to the Dutch army and the Dutch police. He said that he would meet an intermediary
who would tell him how much corruption money would have to be paid for
information or orders. Once he agreed,
he would pay the money to the intermediary.
It was clear that the money would be paid to government officials. Currently there are major suspicions about
corrupt purchases by the Dutch police.http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/corruptiespel-rond-wapens-voor-nederlandse-politie~a3757688/

A new UNICEF
report says that the poverty of children in the Netherlands has increased from
12.9% in 2008 up to 13.9% in 2013. 11%
of people interviewed in 2013 said that there had been moments where they did
not have enough money to buy food for themselves. In 2008, the figure was 4%. Already in March of this year, the
Verwey-Jonker Institute published the fact that between 2009-2012, the number
of children living in poverty in the Netherlands increased by 10%. The report also mentioned that impoverished children
live mainly outside the main urban areas.

Monday, October 27, 2014

The head of
the national police has decided to suspend five employees who are responsible
for purchasing.He said that this
decision was necessary because of the debate on the integrity of the
police.The prosecution department of
the Ministry of Justice has started, as of last month, an investigation of a
variety of police employees.The Minister
of Justice, Ivo Opstelten (Liberal) has informed parliament that there are
suspicions of corruption concerning the purchase of police vehicles in
2010.Furthermore, there are now
indications that a major order for mobile phones has not been dealt with
according to the law.The same is true
for communication and other equipment.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Dutch
military who go abroad for their work or vacation should cancel the facilities
to locate them via social media. According to the Ministry of defense in that
way can be prevented that jihadists can locate them. The ministry of defense
has informed soldiers that their Facebookpages should not be accessible to the
public. This warning follows a number of incidents where soldiers have been
harassed via the internet. The MIVD ( The Military Intelligence Service) has
started an investigation.)

Friday, October 24, 2014

In a radio
program Pieter Broertjes, (Labor party) the mayor of Hilversum has compared
Jihadis from his town who left for Syria to the Dutch Jews who went after the Second
World war to Israel to fight there against the English. He said that those who
left for Syria are adult people. Via his
spokesman the mayor modified his statement somewhat. He stated that Broertjes
wanted to say was that the authorities can not forbid people for whatever reason
to go and live elsewhere. [Comment: recently Broertjes said that the Netherlands
should expel Putin’s daughter in view of the West’s conflict with Russia.)

Thursday, October 23, 2014

One out of
ten government bureaucrats has strong doubts about the integrity of their
colleagues.Similarly, one out of ten
officials in communities and provinces have doubts about their fellow
politicians.The main subjects concerned
are false declarations, the treatment of confidential information, and conflict
of interest.These results are from the Monitor
for Integrity of Public Management 2012.Such a study is carried out every year by the BIOS bureau.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Recent data
from the Waterschap Rijn en Ijssel show that if a dike breaks on the German
side of the Rhine River, the eastern part of the Netherlands until Zwolle might
be flooded. That would lead to hundreds of deaths and tens of billions in Euros
of damage.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Elementary
schools have great difficulty coping with children who either hardly speak
Dutch or not at all.These difficulties
result in part from the new flood of refugees from Syria, Somalia and Eritrea,
but also from children from Eastern Europe.The teaching material available often dates from the 1980s.Government subsidies can only be obtained if
a school has at least 4 pupils who are less than one year in the country.

Monday, October 20, 2014

The guidelines
for asbestos-removal companies are inadequate.
Companies which lose their license because they do not respect these
guidelines can easily create a new corporate entity and receive a new
license. The authorities cannot do
anything about this. These facts were
obtained from internal emails from the Ministry for Social Affairs.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Almost one-third of police employees
were either threatened or assaulted by civilians during work hours.Outside of the workplace, this was the case
for 14% of police employees.These
results are from research done among 3,000 employees by the Police Academy.Another study showed that one out of five
policemen who are involved in maintaining order and answering calls for emergency
help are met with threats and violence after work hours.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Forensic experts and pathologists
say that murderers in the Netherlands increasingly escape punishment. This results
from the fact that after suspicious deaths far too little forensic research is
being done. Last year the number of autopsies was halved. Pathologist Frank van
de Gool says that every year 5 000 people die from non-natural causes including
traffic accidents. The number of annual autopsies is barely 300.

Friday, October 17, 2014

The European Commission wants to impose
a penalty of 51.156 Euro per day on the Netherlands as the Netherlands has not
yet converted the European rules of treatment of laboratory animals into
national legislation. It will bring The Netherlands before the European Court
on this issue. The national legislation should have been adopted by November 2012.
With its rules the European Commission wants to diminish the use of laboratory
animals as much as possible.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

In 1977 a Dutch
train was hijacked by people from the South Moluccas. A policeman has now declared
that then Minister of Justice Dries van Agt (Christian Democrat) had ordered
that the hijackers “should not leave the train alive.” When Dutch marines
stormed the train six hijackers and two hostages were killed.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

A parliamentary
commission headed by Tom Elias (Liberals) has concluded that the government is often
unable to control computerization projects. This concerns the costs, execution
on time and the final results. Much money is invested in failing projects. An
earlier estimate by the expert Professor Mulder indicated that the government
wastes every year 4 to 5 billion Euro on failing computerization projects.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

According to Esther Voet, director
of the Dutch Israel defense organization CIDI, in the summer of 2014 the number
of anti-Semitic incidents reported was equal to the year number of incidents in
the year 2011-2012. She estimates that 2/3 of these are caused by non-Western
immigrants or their descendants. [Comment: this is a euphemistic way for saying
people originating in Muslim countries. They represent about 7% of the
population]. Voet says that social media has played an essential role in the incitement
against Israel. She was herself the victim of incitement and can no longer keep
track of all the insults on Facebook and Twitter against her.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Anonymous policemen have leaked that
the authorities and public broadcasting organization NPO put pressure on the
makers of a program that shows real unsolved crimes “Opsporing Verzocht” to
diminish the number of Moroccan and other non-Western criminals that are shown.
The makers want to give a real view of society, which means that a
disproportionately large number of crimes are being committed by Moroccans.
They say that the authorities reproached them and accused them of making a
Moroccan problem. The policemen say that this turns the world on its head, as
the police has its hands full in finding Moroccan criminals.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

The Ministry
of Finance has confirmed that customs officials should not wear uniforms
outside their workplace.This follows
earlier instructions from the Ministry of Defense that soldiers should not wear
uniforms when using public transportation.These instructions followed a threat from jihadi circles calling for
revenge against Dutch participation in the fight against the Islamic State.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Dutch men
spend every year 430 million Euros for prostitution.10% of Dutch mails visit a prostitute 15
times per year. Prices vary between 36 euro and 164 euro.This research was done by the National Bank
of Belgium.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

A hundred
Kurdish protestors forced their way into the Dutch parliament building and sat
on the floor holding banners, one of them which read “Stop Kobane”.The protestors explained that this was a
protest against Islamic State fighters who are attacking the town of Kobane in
northern Syria.They want the West to do
more to stop the situation.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Ministry
of Defense has told soldiers not to travel on public transport in uniform. This because of a call from a Dutch jihadist
who has cried for revenge against the Dutch because of their participation in
the war against the Islamic State. A
spokesperson of the Ministry said that after that call, there have been
specific threats against soldiers. Former intelligence employee, Paul Mulder,
has said that he expects attacks on soft targets in the Netherlands, which could
include train and metro stations.

Monday, October 6, 2014

The increasing fear of the
terror group, ISIS has led to the cancellation of a school trip to Paris of 400
graduating high school students from Etten-Leur.This is because ISIS has threatened attacks
in the Paris Metro network.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

UK Doctor Peter Saunders of
the Christian Medical Fellowship said that the Dutch experience shows that
doctor-assisted death is impossible to effectively regulate. He added that, “euthanasia in the Netherlands
is virtually out of control.” Overall
deaths by euthanasia have increased by 151% in seven years. The Dutch regulator, Theo Boer, says that it
is likely to hit the 6,000/year mark in 2014. These figures represent 3% of all
deaths, but if one adds the cases of terminal sedation, where patients are
given a cocktail of sedatives and narcotics before food and fluids are
withdrawn, the percentage rises to 12.3% of all deaths in the Netherlands.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Rob de Wijk, Director of The
Hague Center for Strategic Studies, says that the Ministry of Defense is still
selling military equipment in substantial amounts while it is clear that more
money has to be spent on defense.Some
of the equipment sold is brand new.In
next year’s budget, income from selling such equipment is estimated at 117
million Euros. This policy was criticized by Christian Democrat parliamentarian
Knops.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Deputy Minister of
Infrastructure, Wilma Mansveld, said in parliament that in 2018 the NS (Dutch State
Railways) will start installing existing short-range trains with toilets. By 2021, all short-range trains will have a
toilet. [Question:What do train
passengers have to do until then?]

Thursday, October 2, 2014

A school and various buildings in the town of Voorburg have been vandalized with pro-ISIS graffiti and with texts such as “ISIS -All Jews Will Die”.The police assume that it is just hooliganism. [Comment:It is easiest for the police to describe it as such because it requires little action from them.]

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

There is no money available within
the current budget for the Dutch involvement in the fight against ISIS.To pay for the costs of the F-16 planes and
military trainers the Dutch government is providing to the international forces,
the money will have to come out of the 2017-2019 budgets.Rob Swartbol, Director of International
Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says that the money in the 2014-2015 budgets is almost entirely earmarked for Dutch involvement in the international military
missions to Mali and the Somali coast.

Welcome to the Bad News from The Netherlands blog!

News coverage from Israel is often distorted if measured against the 'Code of Ethics' guidelines of journalism. The origins of “bad news” about a country thus lie with numerous foreign media. This project exposes one of many methods used.

“Bad News from the Netherlands” has raised major international interest since it appeared on the web in October 2007. Many thanks are due to all those who have contributed news, ideas and financing. Support us to expand this project.

Act against the biased media: start a “bad news” blog about another country. If you want to use this layout, please contact us at the e-mail address below.

Do It Yourself

The "Bad News Movement" is not a franchise, but consists ofindependent initiatives of which Bad News from the Netherlands is the first. Yet as the initiator of the movement, we would like to make a few suggestions to those who want to establish similar projects:

1. Always keep in mind the target of the blog: showing only negative items about a country makes its society aware of how some of their media distort the image of Israel.2. Focus on items from leading sources such as the government, major media, well-known institutions.3. Do not concentrate on one or a few areas. Deal with as many major aspects of the country as possible: government, politics, justice, media, culture, civil society, etc.4. Do not exaggerate issues beyond what is mentioned. A collection of bad news is bad enough without blowing up the facts. Let the facts speak for themselves.5. While one can draw part of the information from the more sensational papers, let them not dominate the blog.6. Do not emphasize ethnicity of people where it is irrelevant to the issue.7. When necessary, provide comments on issues which require it, but try to present the majority of issues without comment.